Five benefits of helping to free Bodhi

We do a lot here on Wildmind with the intent of helping people become happier. And we do it on a shoestring. And with a tiny team.

There is a “we” at Wildmind, but only barely. I have an assistant who works part-time, three days a week, and who takes care of our online store. This helps pay the costs of running an office and an extensive website. We have a volunteer in Toronto who posts the news stories. And we have a couple of regular or semi-regular (unpaid) contributors to our blog. A professional bookkeeper comes in two afternoons a month. But otherwise it’s all up to me. I write the blog articles, I put together our website, I teach courses, etc. I also handle publicity, planning, computer maintenance, and a gazillion other admin tasks.

I’m going to offer you five great reasons why you should donate to our Free Bodhi project — to help free me up from admin so that more people can benefit from meditation and Buddhist practice.

1. Help millions of people to get started with meditating.

Our structured meditation guides, which I began creating in 2001, have benefitted literally millions of people. In the last five years alone we’ve had five million visitors to our site. Just think about that: by supporting us you’re literally helping to bring the benefits of meditation to millions of people! We have plans to bring to our site a completely revised form of free meditation guide — much more interactive and with more of a multimedia focus. And I can’t do that without your help.

2. Bring greater depth to the practice of hundreds of thousands of people.

We started our blog in 2007, and hundreds of thousands of people benefit from the articles we’ve published. We track what the media are saying about meditation, and bring you news about the medical and psychological benefits of meditating. We bring you book and film reviews. And we bring you the fruits of decades of practice, as expressed in our articles about practicing meditation, and on how to bring a more mindful and compassionate attitude into every aspect of your life. Our most popular blog post has been read by more than a quarter of a million people! The second most popular has been read by almost 200,000. You can help free up my time so that I can write more blog posts.

3. Help me create more free guided meditations.

Recently Google has made it possible for me to run “Hangouts on Air,” which are public broadcasts of videoconferences. I’ve been using those to lead guided meditations, which are not only broadcast, but are recorded and posted to Youtube. This is a fantastic way of creating guided meditation recordings. And by supporting Wildmind you help make these possible.

4. Create a Year of Going Deeper

Earlier this year I ran a series of activities called 100 Days of Lovingkindness. This created an amazing archive of resources that’s still online, and free for anyone to use. Next year we plan to build on that success, and to run no fewer than eight structured activities. We’re calling this our Year of Going Deeper. This will give people everything they need to progress spiritually, from a first introduction to meditation, to more in-depth guides to Awakening.

We quite literally will not be able to do this without your help. I need your help. I need a business manager who can free me up from admin so that I can concentrate on writing and teaching.

5. Giving is receiving.

This one’s rather different. Studies have shown that giving to others makes us happier than keeping our resources to ourselves. In giving to Wildmind you’ll know that you’re achieving a lot of good in the world. You’ll have the pride in knowing that you’re not just consuming resources created by others, but that you’re helping with the creative process. You’ll feel the pride of knowing that Wildmind, and its activities, are yours. In giving, you’ll feel good.